Wallace Wattles

The teaching

Taught from his three books, The Science of Getting Rich (1910), The Science of Being Well and The Science of Being Great.

The thinking stuff, in short

The heart of The Science of Getting Rich is taught in full in the branch Where it comes from of Imagination and intention: there is a thinking stuff from which all things are made; a clear picture impressed on it, held with faith and continual gratitude, produces the thing pictured; and the student must pass from the competitive mind to the creative one and do each day all that can be done that day. What follows is the rest of his teaching, which carries the same substance into wealth, health and greatness.

The right to be rich

The object of all life, he holds, is development, and everything that lives has a right to all the development it can attain. A person grows in mind, soul and body by using things, and in society things are had for money, so the right to life includes the right to be rich; to be content with less than one can use and enjoy he calls sinful. The desire for riches is simply the desire for a fuller life.

No one, he insists, is kept poor because others have fenced off the opportunity: the tide of opportunity turns to new trades and new lands, and the worker in a trust can leave it for a small farm worked well. Those who grow rich on the competitive plane make others poorer, and those who grow rich on the creative plane make others richer. When enough people take up the creative way, he says, governments and industrial systems must change to make room for them, and that is how the masses will be lifted.

Efficient action

Begin where you are, and do all that can be done there. No one rises above their present place who leaves any of its work undone, because the world is advanced only by those who more than fill their places. He draws the rule from evolution: a new species arose when an organism had more life than the functions of its plane could express, and so grew the organs of a higher one. Every day is either a success or a failure, and what brings a person what they want is a succession of successful days, with every act of each day done in a successful manner.

The impression of increase

In every dealing with other people the key thought is to convey the impression of increase. Increase is what everyone seeks, more food, more beauty, more knowledge, more life, because it is the urge of the formless intelligence within them seeking fuller expression, and Jesus set out the law in the parable of the talents. Whoever advances, and advances everyone they deal with, giving each more in use than they take in money, draws people to them. Such a person he calls the advancing man, and he wants the teacher, the preacher and the physician to be one.

Being well

The Science of Being Well carries the same substance into health. A principle of health is in everyone, part of the life of the universe, and the first step is to form a conception of oneself as perfectly well and to think of oneself as doing everything in the way of a healthy person: not by denying disease, which he says achieves next to nothing, but by dwelling on health, with gratitude and faith. Since no one can think health while living as the sick live, the four voluntary functions must be done rightly. Eat only with an earned hunger, which for most people puts the first meal near noon; eat the plain staple foods of one's own region and ignore the quarrels of food science; chew every mouthful to a liquid, attending to its taste. Keep the spine straight and the chest free so as to breathe fully, and sleep with abundant fresh air.

He promises perfect health to anyone who lives so, and the house gives that as his belief, not as medical guidance. Going without breakfast does not suit everyone, and anyone who is pregnant, has diabetes or another condition, or takes medicine follows their doctor rather than the book.

Being great

The Science of Being Great begins from a principle of power in every person. The one intelligent substance is in all, so greatness is in all, and the soul can overcome heredity and circumstance if it is allowed to rule the mind and the body. The first need is faith in principle, and that depends on the point of view: the world, society and each person are to be seen as evolving and good at their stage, not as wrong. Then come four acts of the mind, which his closing exercise puts into words. Consecration is the resolve to obey the soul and be true to what is highest within. Identification is the recognition that there is one substance and source, and that one is made of it and one with it. Idealisation is a picture of oneself at the greatest height the imagination can reach, held as what one already is in soul. Realisation is taking up the power to become it.

He warns against hurry, which he calls a manifestation of fear, and sets out Jesus' idea of greatness: not the one who gets others to serve him, but the one who serves.